


veins busy // hearts in atrophy

by marauders_groupie



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Poet!Bellamy, artist!murphy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 20:20:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7859782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marauders_groupie/pseuds/marauders_groupie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“A poet and an artist, huh?” John whispers into his ear, voice hoarse, cheeks sweaty. Bellamy’s one-bedroom studio is packed with books, papers and pens that don’t even work anymore. His palms are covered in ink. But it’s all good. “What a fucking cliché, Blake.”</p><p>Bellamy cocks an eyebrow, makes John’s heart stutter. He’d never admit it, of course he wouldn’t. Men like him have had enough heartache not to have a heart anymore.</p><p>(But John's still beats out a war march when Bellamy smiles like he sees right through him.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	veins busy // hearts in atrophy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dannika_undomielf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dannika_undomielf/gifts).



> Okay, I've wanted to write Murphamy for the longest time and when Dannika asked me to, I had no other choice. This kind of flowed out of me, I've come up with parts even while on my vacation, and yeah. I love this fic. I hope you will, too. :)
> 
> Enjoy!

Some people have simply been born into love. They’ve grown up with it as easy and as natural as locking the doors behind you when you come home. To them, it’s a hearth that keeps them warm in a cold night and they do not think much about it.

Some people have simply been born into love.

But not John Murphy and Bellamy Blake.

No.

The two of them always saw only stray bits of it; kind glances of passersby when looking at the ragged children with sullen cheeks. Bellamy, when he took Octavia by the hand into the corner bookstore, unable to spare a dime for even the books with cracked spines, but eager to show her stories different to their own. John, when he trailed after his mother, all grey skirts and running mascara, more fury in his heart than food in his stomach.

So when they love each other, it’s a collision.

Bellamy writes poems in a café when he’s off his shift, dropped out of university so Octavia could go, and John’s got paint-stained hands. Always red. Never blue or green. Just red, the same color of his blood, the same color of his anger. Sometimes, they’re one and the same.

It’s Clarke who introduces them, when she prances to Bellamy, ruffles his hair the way she always does, kind of dismissing him, kind of growing into him, and says, “Bell, this is John.”

The boy is all sharp angles, clear blue eyes, and Bellamy recognizes the underlying hope underneath a devil-may-care attitude. “It’s Murphy, actually.”

So he wipes his hands on the coffee-soaked rag, then on his apron, blows away the stray curl that’s Clarke’s fault entirely, and smiles because he’s always loved enigmas and he’s always loved people who pretend to be ones even more.

“Nice to meet you, Murphy. I’m Bellamy.”

John - they switch to John easily after the first time they’re tired, eyelids drooping and lips curled up in lascivious smirks, tension rising between them as Bellamy writes and Murphy works on his assignment. It’s enough for Bellamy to dare and put his hand on Murphy’s thigh for the other boy to kiss him like he’s been dying out of thirst.

“A poet and an artist, huh?” John whispers into his ear, voice hoarse, cheeks sweaty. Bellamy’s one-bedroom studio is packed with books, papers and pens that don’t even work anymore. His palms are covered in ink. But it’s all good. “What a fucking cliché, Blake.”

Bellamy cocks an eyebrow, makes John’s heart stutter. He’d never admit it, of course he wouldn’t. Men like him have had enough heartache not to have a heart anymore.

(But it still beats out a war march when Bellamy smiles like he sees right through him.)

“Blake?”

“Fine. _Bellamy_.”

And the way he says it, drawls lazily, curls his lips around the ls and makes it sound like a chime, it makes Bellamy pull him in for another kiss, messy sheets and July heat be damned. They form a small paradise in the attic apartment, music from John’s phone too gentle for someone whose knuckles are always bruised.

It goes on for a long time, longer than they’d like to admit. Even Clarke smiles when she sees them together, never holding hands but always gravitating like they’re two suns of the same force and they can’t help themselves if they want to just fucking _collide_.

(They’d never admit it’s not a collision when they’re alone. It’s a slow song, honey trickling down your fingertips and cicadas loud like an orchestra.

“I’ve never been to the country,” John says one night.

And Bellamy laughs and laughs because he’s written a poem about how John makes him quiet inside, just the two of them and a porch overlooking green pastures.

“Me neither, love.”)

Bellamy calls John ‘love’ and John calls Bellamy ‘babe’ because he’s still afraid to be soft. He’s tried it once, when his father died, ran his fingertips through his mother’s hair, only to have her shove him away, blame him for everything.

And Bellamy is kind, has that look in his eyes, his sister only speaks good of him, but he’s got callused hands and a hungry heart – just like John – and he can’t really trust anyone anymore.

But for Bellamy, he tries.

He meets Octavia, the girl who looks like a forest fire trapped in a 5’5” body and the first thing she tells him is –

“If you break Bell’s heart, I will break your bones.”

Something about her voice doesn’t even make John question it, he just nods solemnly and stands closer to Bellamy as Octavia pillages the fridge, goes to drink in the bathtub because that’s just what she does.

They’re a weird pair and Bellamy’s said it so many times. John usually laughs it away with “A poet and an artist, what’d you expect?” but it’s not like that, Bellamy tells him with his fingers tangled into John’s hair, bringing him in for a sweet kiss.

“Never like that, babe.”

And Murphy recognizes the taste of the nickname on his tongue. It’s coffee and cigarettes and a lot more affection than they should be able to have for each other.

 

*

 

They break up one morning in December, when snow’s started falling and Murphy has finished this semester’s assignment. He’s got Bellamy’s red scarf around his neck as he stands in the doorway to the small apartment that’s felt grander than a mansion when they loved each other.

Bellamy is wearing zebra-striped socks, hair messy from a late night, ink even underneath his fingernails, and his lips are parted.

Nothing could ever prepare Murphy for how devastated Bellamy looks, tears welling in his eyes.

“Why?”

Murphy shrugs. When he was with Bellamy, he was John. He smiled at kids in the street; a few months of loving all it took to forget a decade of pain. He was better.

Now he’s just Murphy again and his throat rasps when he says, “It couldn’t have lasted. You and I – we’re not fit for each other.”

So he leaves, like cowards do, because Bellamy’s loved him enough for Murphy to know that broken things can never heal – they just ruin everything else.

He goes home and douses his body in cold water. For the next three months, he’s got a cold he can’t shake off.

 

*

 

Bellamy drinks. Even more than Clarke whose best friend is vodka. Miller doesn’t even try jokingly teasing him like he did with other breakups. Nothing hurt as much.

“He’s not good for you,” Clarke tells him in the end. Monty’s head is leaned on Miller’s shoulder, Jasper clutches Maya’s hand so tight it’s going to bruise and there’s a look of defiance on Raven’s face. What a sorry pity party they make. “He’s wretched and rotten. Forget him.”

And it makes Bellamy laugh because Clarke’s gone all Victor Hugo on him and he’s never going to forget John.

But he tries.

He writes three hundred and thirty three poems in a month. Lights them all on fire. In the end, he sets his cigarettes on fire, too.

Octavia graduates and he goes back to school. His life has never taken the right route but he’s going to try to force it to. John lingers in the shadows of his apartment until he trades it in for a bigger, better one. And even then, Bellamy can’t scrub him out of his heart.

 

*

 

It’s a good thing Murphy knows what regret tastes like. Otherwise, he’d be in for a treat.

It takes him just two weeks to realize that he can’t undo what he’s done, that he’s broken Bellamy’s heart – all the constellations on his freckles shifted to create an expression that haunts Murphy but he can’t ever paint it.

They’re just unhappy fuckers, that’s who they are. They’d never learn how to be happy together.

Too.

Broken.

But he still approaches Clarke in the hallway when new semester starts, Bellamy’s scarf visible in the throng of people all wearing black or pastels. It’s bright red and it still smells like him.

“Clarke, hey.”

Clarke waits for him to catch up but there’s anger in her eyes and Murphy can’t blame her. If looks could kill, Clarke Griffin would know how.

“Look, I just – “ he stutters and stammers, nearly collides into a wall. Probably smells like cheap vodka. “How is he?”

“No,” Clarke says, plain and simple. There’s no room left for argument in her pursed lips. “No, you don’t get to ask that.”

So he doesn’t. He spins a tale about Bellamy in his head. How he’s happy. How he’s got a guy or a girl (they call bisexuals greedy – Murphy just thinks it’s admirable to be able to love so much) who loves him the way he should be loved. How he’s gone back to school and working on his first novel.

Something. Anything. To make him feel like he has done him a favor.

Exhibits come and go. Murphy makes it into the papers. People buy his paintings, even those he’s made just to make rent, shitty. They _ooh_ and _aah_ , try to find meaning and hold their fingers to their chins.

But in every crowd, he looks for the mop of dark hair, the kind of smiles that put dimples into cheeks. In every crowd, he’s dying to find the Poet.

 

*

 

In the end, it’s almost funny how they meet.

Murphy is taking out the trash, trying to win a fight against the overflowing can in front of his building, and he’s pulling out all the swear words he’s ever known until he hears a voice that he swore he’d never forget.

“You need help with that?”

It’s been eight years but Bellamy Blake still smiles brightly enough to light up the entire New York City and Murphy finds his heart dropping, somersaulting, bounding so much it might break free from the prison of his ribcage.

“Bellamy – “

“John.”

They’ve both got a line or two more around their mouths, a long way from being twenty, but Bellamy’s hands are in his jacket pockets and there’s something about him that makes John cry.

He’s never been pretty when he cries because his throat hurts, the tears stain his cheeks in the dimly lit street as passersby watch the scene unfolding. Bellamy’s leather jacket smells like adventures he’s always told John he wanted to have, and he wraps him in his arms.

“Fuck, Bellamy, I am so sorry, sorry, sorry – “

John keeps apologizing even in his apartment, Bellamy looking around like he can’t recognize it until he sees his own book on the shelf. His first novel. Spines cracked from reading. And Bellamy can see him there, paging through the book, trying to find himself in there, maybe breaking something when he finally does.

Because Bellamy has never been good at hating people. He’s tried to but ultimately, it always hurt even more to love them.

“Pretentious fuckery, right?” he asks, smiles at John self-deprecatingly because he can’t blame him. Not anymore. It wasn’t only John who was wretched and rotten. They both were.

John shakes his head like mad, tugs at his sleeves and takes a seat next to him. “Fuck, no, it was beautiful. I am so proud of you. I’m glad you made it to the bestseller list. Good on you, Bellamy.”

Bellamy’s gaze on him softens from the cocky asshole John loved the most, turns a sunset shade of kind. “You do know that it would’ve happened even if you hadn’t broken up with me, right?”

“You don’t know that.”

“So what? We’d have been poor and happy. We’d have had each other. That’s something.”

“Yeah,” John agrees, tucks in a leg to come closer. The pull is still here but different. Neither of them is trying to stifle their pain by destroying themselves. They’ve come a long way. “Yeah, but then we wouldn’t have this.”

Bellamy smiles into the kiss and they’re not kids anymore. This time, Bellamy introduces John to his son, August, and John spends the entire afternoon chasing him around the playground.

“It’s actually Auggie. No one calls me August, that’s _boring_ ,” the boy wrinkles his nose, every bit like his father. It’s just Gina’s hair and her patience that he has.

“I think it’s a cool name,” John tells him and Bellamy stifles a smile. “Your dad was always good with those.”

The kid levels him with an unimpressed stare. “He named my aunt number eight. Literally. Dad is a questionable figure.”

“Damn, Auggie. That’s a good vocabulary for a six year-old. What do they teach you in school?”

Bellamy throws his hands up in the air, as if to surrender. “He gets it from his aunt, I swear.”

“I get it from my dad’s books.”

And it’s almost odd, how different it is to what they’ve had years ago. Now they’re a family, somehow. Clarke is still there, now holding Raven’s hand, the two of them grinning, and Octavia does glare at John but at least she doesn’t start a fight. The whole gang is here. And when John looks at August, loved by both Bellamy and Gina, he’s not envious. The twenty year old Murphy would be.

But John is just happy that someone had been born into love.

He simply had to grow into it.

**Author's Note:**

>  _You_ try writing Murphamy without angst.
> 
> Other than that - thank you for reading! :D If you liked it, let me know - kudos & comments are a great way to do that! If you didn't like it - tell me what I can do better. Thank you!
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](http://marauders-groupie.tumblr.com).


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